


i like to be called the ceaseless void

by GStK



Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Non-binary character, Other, cosmic horror, transgender character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26319496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GStK/pseuds/GStK
Summary: i am not female or male; i identify as your undoing.
Relationships: Lucilius/Lucio (Granblue Fantasy)
Kudos: 13





	i like to be called the ceaseless void

there’s something following you home from school.

the sunset is vermilion wrapped up in a lilac coat. the sidewalk rises, disappears in some places. the roads are narrow. the cars nudge around you, not the other way around. you make yourself felt, like a gravity well in the rocky fields of kumakougen.

you creep your way back home from middle school. your shadow follows obediently behind you. you hold your bag out in front of you, ten fingers on the handle, the leather jolting against your skirt with each step forward. you take inventory of your weapons:

english homework. (can’t beat it to death.)

pepper spray. (illegal. doesn’t matter. won’t work.)

emergency buzzer kept over from your elementary days. (no one will save you.)

you don’t have much. you grit your teeth. you’ve become soft. belial has become your tool of war. he can swing a pipe or handle a knife as neat as a grin. you could call him.

addendum: smartphone. (what are you waiting for?)

you pull the black phone out of your bag. full battery, full bars. you have a portable charger and a wifi hotspot on you, too. you’re not unprepared to ask for help.

you just won’t. you switch the thing off and trudge on.

there’s a rickety bridge you have to traverse. it snaps civilisation and the wilds cleanly in half. one of the boards is broken. someone fell here. died here. the threat doesn’t scare your stalker, so you aren’t scared, either.

belial calls you rash. your teachers call you attention-seeking. you were removed from the science club two weeks into the first semester. now everyone raises a brow at your new extracurricular.

the occult club. presidency suits you fine.

the bridge doesn’t bring you down. the path reverts to its basest form: dirt and rocks. you have to watch your feet to avoid tripping. what remains of the sun is peeking through the encroaching forest, the trees around you. it's a blockade that dapples and breaks in the worst places. it invites you. the wilds aren't supposed to be inviting.

you can’t look. if you look anywhere but down, the _everything_ outside of reality will make your eyes bleed. you are in a box, with something indescribable following you on each side. you saw it once. just for a second. there’s been a grey film over your vision ever since.

the path starts to slope down. you pass a children’s park that’s been reclaimed by nature. you push between two wooden slabs demarcating a holy ground. it slips right on through.

if you walk all the way home, it’s going to get into your house. it will take your brother. it told you so. last time. the time before that. it would take your brother because he would look.

you stop where you stopped the last day and the day before that. the leaves are disturbed. you can see your previous footfalls waiting for your shoes to slide on in. you’re right by the swingset lucifer used to play in. there’s a rusted seesaw beside it. it’s weighed down by something made manifest. your stubbornness. its endurance. or a rock someone put there to ensure it would never sway again.

the wind ruffles your skirt. you hold your bag and stand frozen, legs straight.

it is right behind you.

you look ahead because closing your eyes is worse. it can suggest pieces of itself into your subconscious. it can derail your train of thought and steer it into a cosmic abyss. it's known you in a mental intimacy.

 _why me_ , you might think. if you were sandalphon, perhaps you would whine. but you are not just any boy. you can take a soft breath down the back of your neck. fingers that don’t quite touch your waist. you can take this. for lucifer. until the sun goes down.

“lucilius!”

you jerk. the voice comes from behind you.

you can feel it smile. the hairs raise on the back of your neck.

there are degrees of sanctuary. there are degrees of hellfire. god never had a chance with you. you just can't seem to shake the stragglers of the evil kind. no more looking.

“go inside, lucifer,” you tell your brother, sharp, commanding. you can hear him plodding towards you. then he stops. he’s looking at you. _stop looking_.

“what are you waiting for?”

“go inside,” you tell him again. terse. he keys in to your uncertainty, not your hostility.

“lucilius--”

“ _go_ ,” you say, turning on your heel when five fingers settle on your shoulder. if you can’t keep him away then you can hide his eyes. close your own. wait for the count.

“lucilius?” lucifer asks.

to the left of you.

the left.

you don’t know how it smiles but it does. no face. just an open, gaping maw of a persona. it’s surrounded by a ring of thousand eyes, each taken from a different person. its palms have teeth. it sees you. it reaches out, beyond you.

the mistake is looking away. you see your brother collapse, rolling down the side of the path.

you look back.

your brother’s face looks at you, fit on a neck of black iron. luminescent.

“lucilius,” says a thousand voices. you can hear the squeal of a radio as it borrows voices from the electric waves. just not the one it’s supposed to.

it reaches out and cups your cheek. “brother.”

you swing your bag but it is too late.

i catch you by the hands.

the encroaching moon shakes the earth. everything rumbles. doom on quick dial. skin melting and a hundred things that can’t be replaced.

i will be every one of them.

i smile his loving smile and you are frozen again. i have the antidote.

i kiss you with a mouth i never had. no apologies out of the radio thrush. just the gratitude of an open mouth and tight arms.

you didn’t have to look. but i’m glad you did.


End file.
